For example, in the context of multimedia usage by mobile terminals, a study has shown that currently at least 40% of communications are conducted via short-range local area networks (for example wifi wireless networks). Often, this communication is established at the residence of the users of such terminals, particularly via a gateway between a local area network of the above type and a wide area network (such as the Internet).
The most recent terminals even integrate a functionality of transferring a wifi communication in progress (voice or data) from one local network to another, when the terminal is for example in a mobile situation. In such an application of freely communicating via successive access points (or networked community “hotspots”), gateways of residential local area networks each form an access point. For example, a telephone call in progress on a mobile terminal located in the local area network of one gateway will be relayed by this gateway to the wide area network by voice over IP (VoIP). If the terminal leaves the range of this gateway and enters the range of another gateway, it is detected in the local area network of this new gateway and the latter gateway can relay the VoIP communication.
In one embodiment, the gateway is provided with a dedicated identifier or “SSID” (“Service Set Identifier”). This is a name identifying a wireless network according to IEEE standard 802.11 and can consist of 32 characters.
The gateway can use two independent SSID identifiers:                a private SSID for a conventional and household use of the gateway, and        a public SSID (in the context of “wifi community network” applications) for visitor terminals accessing the service of the gateway as a hotspot.        
An authentication is performed based on these identifiers, which are usually static identifiers (for example login id and password, in messaging).
As an example, the user of a terminal needs to access his emails because of an urgent situation. The terminal first locates a wifi access point (a service for locating wifi hotspots may exist for this purpose). The terminal can connect to it once the user has provided his login id and password to a portal for local hotspot access.
Such a wifi community network application presents limitations, however.
A first limitation concerns the number of simultaneous connections which can be associated with a single community SSID, which is linked to the number of IP addresses available. Today, there can be at most only five connections per gateway acting as an access point.
Another limitation concerns the available bandwidth. The “wifi community network” service only offers 1 MB/s for sharing by all visitors, which divides the 1 MB/s bandwidth into 200 Kb/s (for five simultaneous connections).
In practice, when a terminal attempts to connect to a gateway with a community SSID identifier, if this SSID is saturated, the gateway cannot accept the new connection request (if five terminals are already connected to it). Then, in case of no wifi association with a community AP, the terminal attempts to connect to the closest access point providing a similar service. However, there is no guarantee that the terminal can connect to another access point (the latter may also be saturated) and no message is provided to inform it of this.